A year on from attack, 2014 Boston Marathon a test of security

SIMON SANTOW: Tomorrow more than 35,000 runners will take to the streets of Boston for the 118th running of the city's famous marathon.

It'll be a test of security, but also a chance for the city to show its unity a year on from the deadly attack on the race. Then, two home-made pressure cooker bombs ripped through the crowd, killing three people and injuring 264 others.

North America correspondent Jane Cowan reports.

JANE COWAN: The race director says Boston is now the safest place on the planet. Tomorrow, 4,000 police officers will be on patrol, 500 of them undercover in an effort to preserve the festive spirit of the event.

Boston's new police commissioner, Bill Evans is a runner himself who was participating in last year's marathon. This year he'll be on duty all day.

BILL EVANS: We'll I think we'll be looking for somebody who just doesn't feel right, the characteristics. A lot of our officers underwent training looking at the characteristics of someone who might be carrying explosives

JANE COWAN: Police have already been put through their paces when a mentally unstable man dropped a backpack on the ground during a memorial service last week - a bag that turned out to contain a rice cooker with confetti in it. It was a hoax, but the bomb squad took no chances, exploding the device.

With the marathon route stretching 42 kilometres, former New York City police chief Ray Kelly admits it's an enormous area to secure.

RAY KELLY: Well obviously some sort of copycat event, something that look similar to what we saw last year - and again, you cannot totally rule out an event happening away from the marathon.

What we used to say is you look at the world through the prism of 9/11. Now, the officers and the spectators have to look at it through the prism of what happened on April 13th 2013.

From my perspective I think the Boston authorities, the Massachusetts authorities, have done everything they reasonably can do make this a safe and secure event. You can reduce the risk, but in a free and open society you can never totally eliminate it.

JANE COWAN: Organisers have admitted an extra 9,000 runners this year to allow the roughly 5,000 people on the course when the blasts happened to finally cross the finish line. Among them will be 25-year-old school teacher J. P. Craven, who last year was in the crowd to cheer on his father.

He was just three meters from where one of the bombs went off, suffering burns and head injuries that doctors feared would cause brain damage.

J. P. CRAVEN: I came to the finish line, I was waiting, I had walked it was a really nice day and obviously when the explosions happened, it went a little haywire.

But I ended up running to the medical tent and got taken to Boston Medical Centre, and that's where everybody kind of kicked into gear to help me out.

JANE COWAN: The surviving suspect, 20-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is awaiting trial on charges that carry the death penalty.

Authorities say they have no intelligence suggesting this year's race is being targeted by terrorists. But that was also the case last year.

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